Beating The Books How Often Do Movies Outshine The Book They’re Based On?

“The Bridges of Madison County,” the book: “Simplistic, sketchy, emotionally phony” - New York Times.

“The Bridges of Madison County,” the film: “Exquisite … a consummate emotional experience” - Dallas Morning News.

A movie better than the book? How often does that happen?

“My guess is rarely,” says Rafael Yglesias, who adapted his novel “Fearless” for the 1993 film.

“‘The Godfather’ improved on the book,” he says. And, of course, there was … Yglesias pauses, struggling for more examples.

But nearly everyone agrees the new film romance starring Clint Eastwood as a photographer/ adventurer and Meryl Streep as an Iowa farmer’s wife is vastly superior to its source material, Robert James Waller’s overwrought bestseller of the same name. “Bridges,” which opened June 2, has earned a healthy $25 million so far at the box office.

Ask other novelists for examples of written works that are significantly better on screen and you’ll find a phenomenon not so rare as Yglesias may think.

“Rosemary’s Baby,” nominates Lisa Zeidner, who wrote “Limited Partnerships.”

“Love Story,” offers Paul Rudnick, author of “I’ll Take It” and of the play “Jeffrey,” which he recently adapted for the screen.

“The Big Sleep,” says Phillip Lopate, who wrote “The Rug Merchant.”

“Rear Window,” volunteers Robert Plunket, author of “Love Junkie.”

In fact, says Plunket, “there’s an old saying that good books make bad movies and bad books make good movies.”

Pop novels have certain qualities that more easily lend themselves to film. “A bad novel doesn’t clutter you up with ideas, so you can make the points visually,” observes Zeidner, a literature professor at Rutgers/ Camden.

“Literature is about inner life. Pop novels are about plot,” Lopate reflects. “And since what’s important about movies is momentum, that makes pop novels more adaptable to screen.”

“Take Tom Clancy,” says Yglesias. “His characters do not have inner lives. His characters do not have ambiguities. Jack Ryan (the CIA operative and hero of Clancy novels) has an adventure, solves a mystery, battles his enemies. He is a ‘hero in jeopardy’ - it’s a classic Hollywood form.”

“A tremendous reason for the success of potboiler fiction as movie material is the way movies are written,” reflects Plunket. “Some pivotal action has to take place at the 20 percent point; some reversal has to take place at the 80 percent point. John Grisham novels are textbook examples of this.”

Mysteries, such as Raymond Chandler’s “The Big Sleep,” Dashiell Hammett’s “The Maltese Falcon,” and the Cornell Woolrich short story “Rear Window,” are also ideal for Hollywood, Yglesias thinks, “because you get character exposition in a suspense format. You have a detective asking questions that propel the plot.”

Other pop genres ideally suited for Hollywood are gangster novels - because they likewise have characters in jeopardy - and love stories, because they offer an attractive showcase for stars.

“Movies can be more deft with the cheaper emotions,” says Rudnick. “They can be better than novels at epic sweep, panorama, romance” - all attributes, he notes, of “The Bridges of Madison County.”

What did Rudnick think of Waller’s book? “I thought it was (a long pause) extremely short, which I consider a virtue,” he says. “I was fascinated with its success.”

So was Plunket, who reviewed Waller’s third novel, “Border Music,” for the Times. “(‘Bridges’) enormous success astounded me. … I started thinking, ‘What’s his secret?”’ Plunket said.

While reading “Border Music,” the answer came to Plunket in a flash. Waller has “invented a whole new category of writing … a hitherto undiscovered genre. I call it Old Adult, as opposed to Young Adult. Young Adult books are, of course, aimed at the anxious adolescent, feeling alone in the world, who needs some validation and reassurance. Old Adult books perform exactly the same function for people in middle age.”

For Rudnick, “Bridges” was a natural for the screen.

“The characters are described in movie-star terms. He’s this rawboned cowboy and - this is where it’s diabolical - a man who is wellmuscled, but also sensitive and artistic. He’s like Fabio with a master’s degree. He’s this man who comes to your house and falls in love with you as you are, not you 10 pounds lighter. It’s a very satisfying fantasy.”

And fantasy sells movie tickets, whether it’s about “Star Wars” hero Luke Skywalker or “Bridges” heroine Francesca Johnson.

Rudnick, who hasn’t seen the movie version of “Bridges,” has seen the ads and is “obsessed” with the image of Eastwood and Streep sharing a bathtub.

Noting that the hottest sex scene in “Out of Africa” was the one in which Robert Redford shampooed Streep’s hair, Rudnick demands, “What is this thing with movies about women over 30? Why is the fantasy that a man will give her a bath or wash her hair? What’s next? A perm?” While Rudnick also subscribes to “the worse the book, the better the movie” theory, this kind of thinking peeves Yglesias.

“When I hear that axiom, I get really (angry), because it’s not hard to make a good book into a good movie,” Yglesias says. “It’s only hard if you want to make money. It’s only hard if you have to get Tom Cruise or Mel Gibson to play the leads. The requirements and logic of Hollywood make it hard to tell a good story.”

The Hollywood requirements, Yglesias says, are these: That the story be centered on a male. That the lead actor be in most of the scenes. That the plot hinge on suspense.

While most great literature lacks these components, Yglesias argues, this does not mean a great work of literature can’t make a great movie.

“‘Tess.’ ‘Schindler’s List.’ ‘Lolita,”’ Yglesias fires off, marshaling evidence that there are any number of great books that turned into great movies.

And don’t forget the Forster Paradox: that all the movies based on E.M. Forster novels - “Howards End,” “Maurice,” “A Passage to India,” “A Room With a View” - have been uniformly excellent.

The reason, Yglesias says, is the Forster movies were made outside the Hollywood system. This permitted the development of “screenplays conceived with the same complexity as the source material.”

Plunket agrees. He doesn’t think his Hollywood axiom applies across the board.

“‘Midnight Cowboy’ was a wonderful novel and a wonderful movie. So was ‘From Here to Eternity.’ So was ‘Dangerous Liaisons.’ But then you have ‘Bonfire of the Vanities’ - a good novel, but the movie was a total misunderstanding of Tom Wolfe’s book.” Not to mention a bomb of historic proportions.

“That negative experience made Hollywood shy away from literary novels,” he says. “You can hardly blame them.”